Okie doke, a second take on yesterday's - ok, looking at the time, it is now the day before yesterday's keynote lectures.
The first was delivered by Eliane Glaser, Writer, radio producer, and an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London.
Let's say this has something to do with subliminal agendas.
Her talk is entitled: Ideology Now: A world turned upside down
Despite her talk coming from a very political stance, what she is arguing about is that we must be careful with taking in the visual language and portrayal that recent politics in Britain has had in leaning towards Capitalism.
With pernicious use of social media, visual language and psyhological tricks, we are seeing misrepresentations of politics and brands that create the illusion of the "big money pretending to be the little guy". This is seen in how David Cameron rolls up his sleeves and recalls the last pastie (a very working class food) he ate, to Jamie Oliver's preserve jars designed to look fifty years old or Starbucks using chalkboard menus and keeping coffee bean sacks in view.
Capitalism underwent an identity change which has put it in a more positive standing and is harder to criticise than the old-school traditional business image it once had - through subliminal means.
The second talk of that day came from Evan Davis, a presenter of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
Economic Models
How Britain Earns its Living
Davis mapped out to us a linear development of a western developed economic model. With three levels, he explains how the British industrialisation was a key discovery in the way the world's economies function today. (Imagine, if you will, a leveling system as one might find in an RPG video game):
Level 1: Industrialisation. Factories and manufacture of physical goods for export. Cheap to set up, fast to put into production, can take on unskilled workers and make them productive.
Level 2: Intellectual Property. Scientific products and designs, coupled with creative products. This concentrates more on selling an aesthetic and choice, and detracts focus on producing the physical end product to more on the design and blueprints. Money is made from licensing.
Level 3: Services. Providing highly trained intangable products, including financial, law, educational, management etc.
He goes on to bring out attention to how abandoning any form of physical manufacture has left us vulnerable to relying on imports of goods, and that the problems faced with Intellectual Property and Service based industries has lead to a disproportionate balance of jobs creating inequality in the distribution of wealth.
However, he predicts that having now identified the problems, we will start to revert back to some of the more basic industries in order to create a greater balance in the "goods" that Britain as a nation will provide, creating a better balance of jobs across social backgrounds.
Ugh, that last one has me feeling like I stepped out of a history lesson in secondary school. Not an entirely bad thing, but I dislike how I've not really developed any sort of idea in there, I've just pretty much done a mapping out of his mapping out (meta!).
No comments:
Post a Comment